Kramer's Ergot
I recently purchased The Best American Comics 2007 featuring guest editor Chris Ware, and in it I found a very interesting and unsettling comic by New England art collective Paper Rad, called "Kramer's Ergot 'Fuck You' 9." Blogger Jog describes the comic:
"And then, right after that, there’s Paper Rad. Which couldn’t initially seem more different, but Harkham’s and Buenaventura’s positioning of the work reveals how much it has in common with Cayro’s work: an eagerness to apply beloved pieces of popular culture to the creation of a personal cosmology, even a spirituality. The results are vastly different, but then Kramers Ergot wouldn’t be much if it wasn’t diverse. Paper Rad’s effort is titled Kramers Ergot: Fuck You, but it quickly becomes evident that it’s Kramers Ergot telling something to the world, not Paper Rad making a declaration toward Kramers Ergot. The story (as it is) concerns Kramer from Seinfeld, who consumes a bit of Ergot (a mold known to grow on bread that gives the consumer hallucinations), and becomes aware of the possibilities of art beyond Jerry’s apartment, a familiar character literally deciding to voyage away to something different."
It's one of the most bizarre pieces of graphic literature I've ever read. I quickly recognized the visual style of Paper Rad from some brief sequences on the tragically short-lived Wonder Showzen, but hadn't seen much outside of that. I'm not going to try and describe their visual style because Wikipedia does a much better job at that than I can, but, despite it being an amalgamation of all the things that made the early 90s so ugly and today so unbearably hip, I am completely fascinated by this comic and how it is at once so colorful and incredibly stupid and yet also so profoundly disturbing.
"And then, right after that, there’s Paper Rad. Which couldn’t initially seem more different, but Harkham’s and Buenaventura’s positioning of the work reveals how much it has in common with Cayro’s work: an eagerness to apply beloved pieces of popular culture to the creation of a personal cosmology, even a spirituality. The results are vastly different, but then Kramers Ergot wouldn’t be much if it wasn’t diverse. Paper Rad’s effort is titled Kramers Ergot: Fuck You, but it quickly becomes evident that it’s Kramers Ergot telling something to the world, not Paper Rad making a declaration toward Kramers Ergot. The story (as it is) concerns Kramer from Seinfeld, who consumes a bit of Ergot (a mold known to grow on bread that gives the consumer hallucinations), and becomes aware of the possibilities of art beyond Jerry’s apartment, a familiar character literally deciding to voyage away to something different."
It's one of the most bizarre pieces of graphic literature I've ever read. I quickly recognized the visual style of Paper Rad from some brief sequences on the tragically short-lived Wonder Showzen, but hadn't seen much outside of that. I'm not going to try and describe their visual style because Wikipedia does a much better job at that than I can, but, despite it being an amalgamation of all the things that made the early 90s so ugly and today so unbearably hip, I am completely fascinated by this comic and how it is at once so colorful and incredibly stupid and yet also so profoundly disturbing.